Old Music Store

At the moment this old ramshackle music store is in many people's lips. It has been covicted to demolition, but some people think it should be reconstructed and conserved. The music store Järvenpää moved few hundred meters away some time ago. A building company bought the old building and is planning a huge commercial building to replace it. This photo was taken with a cell phone, so I apologize the poor quality.

Bird's eye, Panorama

Here is the first panorama shot in this blog. This is taken, again, from the tower of Lakeudenr Risti church. It's been merged from about 10 images. Here you can see the most of the central Seinäjoki. On the right is the "Alvar Aalto Center", which has a library, town hall, theater and the church designed by Alvar Aalto.

Quiet town

It's quiet in the center of Seinäjoki. Even if the Tango festival is about to end few blocks away, it doesn't show here on "Kalevankatu", "Kaleva-street", which is one of the main streets in the city center. Seinäjoki did this pedestrian-oriented renovation to this part of the street last summer and they will continue renovating the rest of it, I quess, next week. 

The town is trying to make the center more alive. In finland it has been a trend in the last fifteen or twenty years to build large hypermarkets in the outskirts of the cities. That is eliminating the town centers.

When thinking of renovating the center, the pedestrian oriented thing is a good start. But if we want people to come into the center and walk on these pedestrian zones, there should be a lot of small shops, cafes and other stuff that would make it more alive. Now for example on this street, there are mostly banks and insurance companies. 

Also at the same time the town is putting all the parking space under a parking fee. That's just strange if they would want the people to come to the center. Of course that is common in towns size of Seinäjoki. People are just so used to move around by car that they prefer going to the hypermarkets where they can park for free.

Shepherdess

This statue of a shepherdess stands in the center of Seinäjoki. It was designed in the 60's by Jussi Koivusalo. It stands for agriculture where are the roots of Seinäjoki's trade and industry. You can see from the fallen leaves that autumn has come.

Something goin on

Some construction work started on this street last week. They are going to make it "pedestrian oriented", meaning just a narrow lane for cars and wide walkways.

"Talvitien talo", pretty in pink

This pretty house stands in the center of Seinäjoki. I love the color and style of this house. It's one of the nice older houses remaining in Seinäjoki. It's called the "Talvitien talo". I believe the name relates to the original owner named Talvitie.